


Monsters And Magic And Nothing We Were Ever Trained For

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Human, And by season I mean apocalypse, Illnesses, Jotun Loki, Loki is the reason for the season, M/M, Monsters, Over-Tagging, People are going to die a lot, Post-Apocalyptic Monster Hunters, Romance happens at some point I promise, The Monsters Under Your Bed Are Fucking Crazy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-22
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 19:04:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fate of the world suddenly comes to rest on a small group of people. They can't prevent the apocalypse from coming at the hands of legions of monsters. They can't save the human race or protect the Earth. But you can be damned well sure they'll avenge it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which The World Becomes A More Dangerous Place Overnight For The Odinson Brothers

This was the third night in a row that Loki had heard the whispers coming from under his bed. They called him “prince,” they called him “ruler,” and flattering as they were for a gangly, mostly untalented seventeen-year-old; they chilled him to the bone and made his flesh crawl. There was nothing special about him. Certainly, he had to be delusional. Still, at times they made a desperate grab towards his limbs, and his reflexes were often quick enough to avoid them, enough for him to grab his pillow and beat whatever was reaching for him into submission. This had happened before, on occasion over the years, but never with such frequency. And things looked like they were only going to get worse.  
Tonight was no different. The moonlight from his open window cast shadows on the opposite wall, making it just light enough for him to be able to sleep without much worry. He’d never been able to sleep in complete darkness: ever since he was a child it had made him cry out in fear and pain. His father told him that once, when he had been left too long, he had screamed at the top of his toddler lungs and when they returned, he had a blue spot on his right shoulderblade and it had been there ever since. But now, his nightlight had long since burned out, and there was hissing coming from underneath his bed. His skin prickled with fear as he brought his knees up to his chest. The temperature in the room had dropped at least five degrees from when he had entered, or so it seemed.  
The sound of metal scraping against metal came from his curtain rod as something from under his bed reached up and grabbed a hold on the curtain’s seam, pulling it over so as to shut the window. Loki’s eyes widened as he tried to pull it back open, but his struggle was futile. He had never been particularly strong. Darkness filled the room, cast over where the light of the moon had once shone. It was then that the voices began again, louder and more desperate. Incomprehensible, now, as there were multiple voices all layering over each other, rasping and making him shiver. Loki pulled his blankets close to him, covering all parts of his body that may have been exposed.  
There was a jolt, fear overtaking his body as he felt something scratch his ankle. It was so cold it burned, searing into his skin as it tore through the blanket and the pain was intense enough that he screamed. He didn’t care if it was only a delusion anymore. A mental hospital would be a welcome alternative to this. “Thor!” he called out into the darkness, hoping his brother could hear him through the insulation. “Thor! Help me!”  
A rumbling started in the floor and worked its way up to the bed, a tangible feeling of safety that overtook him as he realized those were his brother’s footsteps, heavy and quick to aid him. “Loki?” he heard from the doorway. “Are you alright?”  
The thing slashed again, drew blood this time, the substance warm and wet on Loki’s calf. Around the area of the wound, it was cold again, colder than it had seemed before. He shrieked again, unable to respond coherently to the question.  
Thor took this as a cue to open the door, bringing a beam of light into the room with his silhouette in the doorway, striking an impressive figure that he hoped would make all the monsters go very far away. He flicked on the light, a light yellow glare humming about the room as the golden-haired older brother stepped into the room. “Are you alright?” he asked again, coming closer to his younger brother. Loki winced, withdrawing his torn blanket from his left leg to show the scarlet streaks running down it and, oddly enough, the same blue that was on his shoulder. He looked between Thor and the cuts, his eyes wide with terror. As he sat, he felt the contents of his stomach rise to his throat. There was something about to go very wrong.  
Unfortunately, he was right. No later than he had thought it, something sprung from beneath his bed and attached itself onto Thor’s chest, pounding and clawing and trying to kill the only thing Loki had that meant anything to him. His older brother fought it, enraged, wrestling it to the ground and trying to break it into pieces. He couldn’t get a good look at what the thing really was, but it looked like it was a fleshy sort of color and had a multitude of teeth in addition to its lengthy claws. Tears rolled down Loki’s cheeks, a fear-induced paralysis keeping him in place as his brother suffered. But that didn’t last long, because as he was shaking with terror and cold, he felt something overcome his body and mind, something entirely foreign and filthy-feeling. It made his vocal chords come back into use, urged him to speak. So he did.  
“Stop it!” he screeched, staring at the monster attacking Thor. “Get away from him!”  
And, against all odds, it turned its head to look at him with its gaping maw still open, still red from licking his brother’s wounds, and let go, scampering into the shadows under his bed. The sounds from below died down completely as what felt like everything under his resting place complied with the commands. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. When feeling returned to his body, he dropped off of his bed and went to his brother’s side. “Thor… are you alright?”  
“Yes, I will be fine.” He groaned, standing up and clutching his chest. “We must get you out of here. They have some sort of fixation on you, and I am not willing to lose you to such vile creatures. Get your things. We are leaving immediately.”  
Loki didn’t need to be told twice. He stuffed his pillowcase full of clothing, blankets, and other things important to him, and met up with Thor as fast as he could.  
They were out the door and ten miles away before anyone knew they were gone.  
——  
Thor wasn’t sure whether it was the monsters attacking and the stress that came with it or the spreading marks on Loki’s body that were making him more irritable. Well, they weren’t spreading at a constant rate, necessarily, but he had noticed that the mark on Loki’s shoulder had grown significantly larger. Currently, his younger brother was wrapped in blankets and trying to fend off sleep. He wasn’t sure how much longer the car could run without stopping for fuel, but he wanted to go as far as he could without slowing down so that whatever was trying to hurt his brother wouldn’t be able to catch up.  
Loki shivered under the blankets and burrowed himself a little deeper into the pile. Thor took one hand off the steering wheel, shifting his grip so he still had decent control over it, and reached out with the other to his younger brother. Loki’s hand poked out from under the blankets, slim and pale fingers linking with Thor’s muscular ones. He wept quietly into the pile of blankets, and as a form of consolation, Thor gave his hand a gentle squeeze. It was the best he could do at the moment.  
The blonde brother winced as he heard the vehicle groan. Something was definitely not working properly. The pale streetlamps illuminating the side of the road and the headlights in front had hardly been enough to keep things away from clawing at their windows, but maybe the full light of a gas station would protect them for long enough to figure out what was wrong and keep going. Maybe he’d have time to fill up the tank as well, and get Loki something to eat.  
As far as he had been able to tell, most of them had an aversion to even artificial lighting, and they never seemed to come into being when somewhere was bright. But at the same time, he’d just been attacked by something that had decided to come into the light. The fact that he hadn’t been attacked by multiple monsters was probably linked to the lighting, but some were unafraid and weren’t affected by it, at least. This entire ordeal was a bit much to be flung into all at once when he was so tired, but he supposed that with time he would start figuring things out.  
Tired. Shit. He hadn’t realized how little sleep he had gotten, and until now he had been running mostly on adrenaline. He couldn’t stop the car yet, and he’d probably have to figure out how to sleep in the daytime. But his body sagged with exhaustion. He didn’t want to sleep later. He wanted to sleep now.  
He pulled up to a nearby gas station. He definitely needed to get caffeine, or something similar to keep him awake. And gas. The car needed gas. And it needed to be looked at. Why did everything have to go wrong at the same time? He parked in front of one of the pumps and sat for a minute, reviewing the situation. Pulling out his wallet, he thumbed through the bills and found his funds to be incredibly limited. This was probably the last time he’d be able to fill up on gas for a very long time. God damn it.  
He took a deep breath, looking over at his brother. Loki had finally fallen asleep, his thin body contorting upon itself under the pile of blankets in an effort to find a position that was comfortable. Despite his previous biting remarks, his face was peaceful now, and Thor gave his hand one final squeeze before letting go and opening the door.  
Nothing attacked him as soon as he got out of the car—a good sign in itself. He fed a few ten dollar bills to the gas pump and went inside the station to get some coffee and maybe a few snacks for Loki.  
The place was practically barren, but considering that it was two in the morning this was not particularly surprising. The only other people inside were the register attendant and a middle-aged man in a suit, debating over the two different kinds of miniature donuts. Thor ignored him, filling up his cup of coffee from the coffee machine and grabbing a large bag of chips. The other man was apparently also finished by the time Thor got to the register, as he put both packages of donuts on the counter. “I couldn’t decide,” he stated, pulling out a few dollars and putting them on the counter. “Keep the change,” he said as he exited into the parking lot.  
Thor watched him leave, then turned back to his own purchases. He said nothing to the woman at the counter, who seemed focused on the man who was leaving. Thor didn’t look up. He just wanted to get his business done and get out of there as fast as he could.  
When he picked up his coffee and turned toward the door, he saw what the attendant had been staring at the whole time, their car was surrounded by monsters. He had turned to look in time to see the man who had just left run a monster through, simultaneously chasing another off by reflecting the light overhead off his phone and into its face and what Thor supposed passed for eyes. The pained sound the monster made, audible even through the glass, startled him into action and he took off toward the car, intent on helping the man fight off the rest of the monsters. The guy seemed to be doing just fine on his own, though, and by the time Thor reached him the last of monsters was limping off into the night.  
“Who are you?” Thor asked, looking over him. He hadn’t gotten so much as a scratch. His tie was a little disheveled and his suit might’ve popped a few stitches, but he looked otherwise immaculate. Compared to Thor’s torn-up chest and arms (thankfully covered by the shirt) it was incredible how efficient he had been. “And how did you do that?”  
The man smiled. “Coulson,” he replied, then gestured at the vehicle in front of them. “Is this your car?”  
“Yes,” Thor said with a nod. “And that is my brother inside, as well.”  
“Are you two going to be okay on your own?”  
He paused. Would they? With a car that might not run much longer and little food, Thor thought it best to be honest. “Most likely, no. The car is making strange noises, we don’t have many resources or provisions, and we cannot stay in one place for a very long time. Also I need sleep and my brother is unable to drive.”  
Coulson made a thoughtful noise as he looked over Thor and the car. “Do you know how to defend yourself?” He shook his head. “Well. Looks like we don’t have much of a choice, then. I can teach you, if you’re willing to come with me and learn.”  
Thor glanced at Loki and chewed his lip. Did they have another option? He hardly knew this man, but he was certainly capable of defending himself and others. And Thor was tired. If it was necessary, he was fairly sure he could overpower Coulson with sheer strength. He sighed, his body suddenly heavy with a tentative mix of relief and suspicion. “I suppose. We don’t have anyone else to rely on.”  
“Then we’ll want to get a move on. These guys aren’t going to wait for us to be ready.” He smiled, clapping Thor on the back as he headed over to his car. And despite himself, Thor smiled back.


	2. In Which Coulson Kills A Unicorn

“So why are you kids on the run?” Coulson asked as Thor sipped at his coffee. “If you don’t mind me asking.”  
“These beasts are following us. They were living under my brother’s bed and have since been drawn to us, or so it seems. I thought it would be best if we continued to move so that they would be unable to catch up.”  
“That’s a good plan when you don’t have anyone to rely on,” he said with a nod, glancing at Loki in the backseat. The teen was fast asleep, buckled in and wrapped in a cocoon of blankets. “Is he okay?”  
“As far as I know. He was clawed at, earlier tonight, and I’ve put a basic wrap on it but we both would do well to have medical attention.”  
Coulson looked over at the boy in the passenger seat. “Both? Were you attacked earlier tonight?”  
“Yes.” Thor nodded, his hand lightly touching his chest. “The things under his bed hurt him, and one came out and injured me as well. I believe he is more in need of help than I, though. His wounds seem to have a strange infection, where mine are simply that—wounds.”  
“What do you mean by a strange infection?” The man’s mind was racing. Monsters focusing on this kid didn’t make any sense. He wasn’t particularly remarkable-looking. He would have expected Thor to be the one they were pursuing rather than Loki. But if they affected him differently, there could be something very wrong with the boy.  
Thor winced. “Whenever he is hurt by one of these monsters, or even touched as far as I can tell, the area around it turns blue.”  
Coulson’s eyes widened as his grip on the steering wheel tightened. His breath hitched as he looked back at Loki again. “Then he’s in some very deep trouble.”  
“What?” Thor froze. “What do you mean?”  
“He is a Jotun, a kind of monster. He must have been put here as sort of a sleeper agent, a monster among us. Contact with others of his kind brings out his inherent nature, and there’s no way to turn those parts of him back. His personality is slowly going to change as he becomes more hostile the more blue he gets. We’re probably going to have to kill him.”  
“He is my brother, Coulson,” Thor growled. “There is nothing in the world more important to me. There must be another way.”  
“Sentiment, Thor.” He shook his head. “He’s not really your brother.”  
Loki’s head lifted slightly, his eyes blinking open. “Thor, where are we? Why are we in a different car?”  
“It’s for your protection, Loki.” His voice shook. Coulson looked away and tried to remain neutral.  
“No it isn’t. I heard him, he wants to kill me. If I’m one of them, then just let me join them. They seem to like me. They called me nice things.” His voice was light and dreamy as he wrapped his arms around his brother’s neck. Coulson repressed the urge to let go of the wheel and turn around to shake him. Instead, he gritted his teeth and let Thor take care of it.  
“Loki, your hands are freezing,” he responded, shuddering. “And they tried to kill you just hours ago. Do you remember none of that? The gash on your leg still throbs with pain, doesn’t it? The ones you would join put it there. They don’t want to treat you nicely, they want you to help them destroy everything, including me. I, who would protect you from anything that ever tried to harm you. They have harmed me as well. They only wish us ill.”  
The boy glanced at his leg, then blinked twice and shook his head. “I’m… I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”  
“Close proximity to your kind while you were sleeping probably messed with your head. We’re going to have to keep a very close eye on him, Thor, if you insist we keep him around. No offense, Loki. You’re just in a very bad situation right now.”  
Loki frowned. “So I can never sleep again?”  
Coulson seemed to find this funny. “No, you’ll be able to. Just not at night, or in darkness anywhere you’re stationary. I’m already nocturnal as it stands because of how things work, but you two will also need to adapt accordingly.”  
“So you encourage sleeping in sunbeams.” This made the dark-haired boy smile. “I think I can do that.”  
The rest of the journey seemed to drag on forever for everyone, most of all Coulson. Thor had long since fallen asleep, nodding off despite his coffee and taking the rest when he could get it. Loki had stayed awake the entire rest of the ride, thinking and looking out the window. The countryside was not particularly interesting, but it was better than interacting with Coulson. For some reason, Loki just didn’t like him or trust him as much as Thor seemed to. Then again, that may have had something to do with the fact that the man had suggested that killing him was a proper course of action.  
A shiver raced down his spine, the blue spots on his body suddenly painful and tender. “There’s something heading toward us,” he blurted out before he realized what he was saying. “Something big. Something fast.”  
The other man didn’t question it, just took Loki’s word for it and sped up the car. “Do you know which way it’s coming from?”  
“No idea, it’s—”  
A spiral horn crashed through the side window, aimed at Coulson’s head. Something that looked a lot like a unicorn with dark red eyes was galloping alongside the car, presumably yet another one of the monsters that were trying to kill them. A small whine of fear came out of Loki’s throat as Coulson glanced back at it. “What is it? One horn or three?”  
“Three?” Loki asked, terrified. “This one just has one. But… three?”  
“Some of them have three horns,” Coulson stated matter-of-factly. “Can you drive?”  
“I’ve never tried before,” he admitted, tears leaking down his face as he curled up in the backseat. “I’m not really talented at fighting or things like that. I’m sorry, I probably won’t be much aid.”  
“Well, what can you do, then?”  
“I can make pretty good tea,” Loki offered up unhelpfully.  
“He is good with words,” Thor added, his eyes cracking open. “What is going on? I heard a crash.”  
“We’ve got a bit of a situation with a—” Before Coulson was finished speaking, Thor was already fast asleep again. “Great. So, words. What can you do with words?”  
“I’m good at speaking in ways Thor doesn’t understand,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “I can write fiction. And I’m a decent liar, but I don’t know how any of that will help.” The unicorn’s head was almost in the window now, snapping at Loki menacingly with teeth that were far too sharp to be that of a normal horse. He scooted away from it, eyes wide. “What do I do?”  
“Do you think you can lie well enough to fool a semi-telepathic horse?”  
“Wh-what?” Loki stuttered, staring at the angry horse-beast. “What exactly does that entail doing?”  
Coulson was still calm, much calmer than he probably should have been. This must have been a thing that happened to him on a daily basis. “You need to pretend you’re a fair maiden. Nothing so obvious as thinking ‘I am a girl,’ but try to convince it, with your thoughts, that you’re female. They can detect gender, and if it thinks you’re a young lady who is pure of heart, it’ll stop trying to kill you, and it’ll let you guide it around. But it detects gender based on the basic masculinity or femininity of your thoughts. So you’ll have to pretend, mentally, to be a girl.”  
Loki gave him a weak smile. “That’s something I can do.” He took a deep breath, closing his eyes for only a moment to gather his thoughts. Reaching out slowly with his hand, Coulson watched as he tried to pet the unicorn’s nose.  
Its mouth shut. It gave him a quizzical look, as if he had just changed appearance entirely, then leaned in to allow him a better reach. His touch was gentle, delicate, and the unicorn seemed to enjoy it. “Great. That’s great, Loki. Now I’m going to open my door, and when I tell you to, I want you to lead it, horn-first, into that gap.”  
“What are you going to do?” His voice was softer now. “And how do I lead it in there?”  
“Just guide it with your hands,” the other man responded. “Reward it when it does something right. Steer it in the right direction when it does something wrong. You’ll get there eventually.” Coulson didn’t answer the first question, and Loki supposed he would find out soon enough. Applying pressure to the beast’s nose, he gently pushed its head back out the window and leaned out of the broken glass himself, trying not to cut himself on any shards that remained. Coulson’s door opened after a bit of fiddling with the lock, and he held the unicorn in place for a few seconds until the other man responded “Go ahead.”  
With some repeated nudging, Loki managed to get the unicorn to put its head between the door and the car with its horn poking through, nearly touching the driver in its proximity. “Thank you. Now I have one more thing to ask of you. Can you get back in the car, lean up here, and keep the wheel steady?”  
Loki withdrew back into the vehicle, then halfway climbed up into the front seat and put his hands on the steering wheel. “Now what?”  
“Now keep your eyes on the road. This is going to get messy.” Coulson let go of the steering wheel, holding the car door with one hand and the unicorn’s horn with the other. Loki stared blankly at the road as the man beside him pulled the door shut on the beast’s head with more force than was probably necessary, then opened it and slammed it again over and over until the horse was long gone and all that was left was the horn in his hand, which had broken off at some point. He placed it on the seat beside him, then shut the door and took the wheel back. “Thanks.” There was blood all over his suit, but Loki tried not to focus on that. Instead, he shrank back into the backseat with a mixture of terror and sudden respect for the man driving the car. “I take back what I said earlier about killing you,” Coulson remarked as Loki pulled his blankets over him again. “You’re a good kid.”  
“Thanks.” The remainder of the ride was silent, a chill coming in through the broken window that made Loki pile his blankets on even more heavily. He was just beginning to drift off again when the vehicle stopped, parked in a small driveway for a house in the middle of nowhere. This was presumably where they would be able to stay with some degree of protection. Day was breaking on the horizon, and Loki shook Thor’s shoulder as Coulson got out of the car. “Thor, we’re here.”  
The blonde groaned, clutching his chest. “I don’t feel well.” It was then that Loki recalled Thor’s wounds from a few hours ago, untreated and festering under his shirt. “We’ll have to ask Coulson to treat that before we go to bed. It’ll be alright, come on. I’ll help you get out of the car if you’d like.” He smiled, opening the door and wrapping his blankets around himself even tighter, holding out his other arm to Thor after he opened that door as well and closed his own. Thor took his hand and pulled himself up, nearly throwing Loki off balance in the process. Coulson had courteously opened the trunk, so he picked up Loki’s pillowcase full of objects in addition to his own sparse possessions. His brother gripped his blankets a little tighter and sprinted toward the door, opening it and stepping inside as soon as he could.  
The two-story building wasn’t particularly lavish like either of the Odinsons were used to, but it would definitely suit their needs and felt like a safe place to be. There was a staircase right by the door, which Loki chose to climb straight away after taking his belongings where Thor explored a bit of the first floor. There was a fireplace in the living room that looked functional with a stocked woodpile, with plush chairs and a sofa circling it and a rug in front where one could sit without major discomfort. No television that he could see, though. How odd. He sat down on the couch, discarding his shirt as he waited. He wondered how long he would be here before he was noticed.  
Loki, on the other hand, quickly found a room to claim as his own. There was a bed, more like a cushion, on a small inset in the wall directly adjacent to the window so that the light shone directly onto the bed. This would be wonderful. He curled up in the new light of day with his blankets, making himself very warm. He hoped that Coulson would find Thor, wherever he was, before he too went to sleep, and that no monsters would come while he was resting. He also secretly hoped that someone else would join them and help them, for it would get terribly lonely if Coulson always took his brother out to teach him how to fight and Loki was left alone in the house, probably stuck in the basement all day so that he wouldn’t be able to be harmed.  
With that morbid thought, he drifted off to sleep and he hoped. It was one of the only things he had left.


	3. In Which The Apocalypse Happens

The boy sat upright with a jolt, his eyes opening wide. “It’s coming,” he stated, staring at the wall.

“What’s coming?” Thor asked, standing up and rushing to his brother’s side. It had been nearly two months since they’d arrived at the little house in the middle of the countryside with Coulson, and for the past few days they had been fretting over Loki’s physical health rather than training. After all, it wouldn’t do much good to be well-trained if he were to die. He had spent the last several days curled up in bed, writhing and sweating and crying out in pain. Thor had assumed he’d had a fever. Coulson, naturally, had assumed far worse.

As it were, they were both right. Loki’s fever had broken earlier that day, and he had been slowly getting better for a while now. But this was not the information they had wanted to hear. Loki’s predictions of new monstrous arrivals were uncanny, and they suspected that they were somehow linked to his status as a dormant monster. Loki had told Coulson of the “prince” situation, but the man had given him little to no response or information about what it had meant. Regardless, he had become a rather good early warning system, and they had never been caught unprepared.

This, however, was something entirely different. This was no normal monster attack. This was a rising of beasts he could feel in his bones. He was just glad he’d become well in time to warn them.

“The end,” he replied, breathless. “Everything is coming. They’re going to end us all so they might rule where we stand today. It’s the end of time. The end of the world.”

“No,” Thor said, shaking his head violently with a scowl on his face. “We will not die. We must fight them until they are the ones who no longer stand.”

Loki frowned. “Thor, we have no weapons. Our only shield is Coulson, and he is a human, not a piece of metal. We cannot possibly survive this.”

“Yes we can,” Coulson interjected. “We just need to be smart about it. We need to go into hiding as soon as possible, somewhere where we won’t be found, and then wait out as much of the fighting as we can without running out of goods. We’ll have more time to get ready if we’re the only ones that see it coming. No one will be scrambling for supplies or trying to make sure everything in their life is okay. We’ll be fine.”

“We aren’t going to warn others?” Loki asked, shocked. “They’ll be slaughtered.”

“And they wouldn’t have been anyway? Besides, who would believe me if I walked into a supermarket and just stated that the end was nigh?” He looked pointedly at Loki. “Believe me, this isn’t what I wanted, but we need to look out for ourselves before we worry about anyone else. Otherwise we’re just asking for trouble.”

Maybe Loki didn’t quite believe that, but it was impossible to argue with Coulson, so he remained quiet and let his brother lead him down to the basement, like they did every night in order to stay safe. The other man left to go get supplies, and they sat in silence, waiting for him to return.

Several days later, they had acquired enough supplies to last them several months if they played their cards right. Loki was acting as a countdown clock to the apocalypse, informing them how soon it was going to be and what time it was going to reach them specifically. When the time came, they locked themselves in the basement and waited. This time was especially difficult on Loki, whose “monster sense” was constantly warning him of the threats above. It was nearly impossible for him to sleep, and he very quickly became grouchy and irritable. Thor begrudgingly put up with it, and Coulson kept his distance. 

After a few weeks of hiding out underground and biding their time, the monster population thinned out a little. Presumably, they were spreading out further, but there were still plenty roaming around and wreaking havoc on the countryside. Coulson took this as an opportunity to try to clear out their area and get more resources if at all possible. They were very quickly running out of fuel for fires, much quicker than any of them had anticipated since the chill of Loki’s body when detecting monsters was enough to significantly reduce its lifespan. So Coulson cleared out whatever monsters were staked out upstairs, then decided to go out and get some more firewood, promising he would come back.

He didn’t return for days. This worried the brothers to no end. If he never returned, one of them would have to go out and get more firewood at the least, if not go searching for him. And if that happened, no matter which brother it was, Loki would be exposed, and things would go terribly wrong. So they waited, and waited some more. Thor was halfway through preparing to venture out when the door opened and not one but two figures descended the stairs in the murky shadows, one carrying a very large object and the other carrying something much smaller.

“I told you I’d come back,” Coulson stated, bringing the firewood down the stairs. “In a few days, the upper part of the house should be safe to live in if everything goes well. And I’ve brought company.”

“Who are these two?” a feminine voice asked, remaining in the darkness of the stairwell.

“This is Thor,” Coulson said, gesturing to the blonde, “and this is Loki. They need a lot of help in order to survive in this place. I figured since you were able to help me, that you might be able to do the same for them in return for a place to stay.”

There was a cough, then a weak laugh from the darkness as well. “Thor and Loki, huh? Must’ve had some fun parents.” The voice was male, raspy, as though its owner was sick. He chuckled, then coughed again.

“You okay, Clint?” the woman asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he responded, his voice weaker now. “I’ll be fine. Just get me down there.”

The other sighed, walking down the stairs. The woman was a redhead, every movement she made deliberate. Despite her smaller size, she appeared to have no problem carrying the other man. His hair was a dark blonde and spiked forward, the points culminating at his forehead. Loki wasn’t exactly sure why, but something about him was invigorating, like good coffee. He liked him already.

“So what do you have for treatment?” the redhead asked, laying the man down on the floor. His arms spread out, and Loki could see that he was weak, pale. This was probably the worst time to be sick. Coulson shuffled through their storage, pulling out some painkillers and cough medicine. “This is what we have, and it’s a limited supply.”

“Don’t worry about it, Nat,” the man on the floor cut in. “Just let me sleep it off. I’ll be fine now that we’re not in immediate danger. It just wasn’t good for me to have to keep getting up and killing things.”

So they did, and he was right. It hadn’t been a particularly bad illness, overall. The newcomers, Clint and Natasha, were actually quite good at fighting monsters. Natasha (or “Nat,” as Clint called her) was a master of stealth and hand-to-hand combat, excelling especially in being unexpected. Clint was an archer, a ranged fighter who saw better from a distance and made sure that a good number of monsters wouldn’t even come close to them. His accuracy was impeccable, even if his choice in weaponry was a bit dated.

Loki especially liked these two new people. He had gotten a bit sick of just having Thor and Coulson around, and these two were both interesting and dangerous. He felt himself drawn to Clint, especially, because of the feeling he got from him of being both invigorated and soothed. It was wonderful, and with Clint taking the top floor only a room away from Loki for his living space, the boy finally slept easily.

He still wasn’t sure what it was about Clint that put him at ease so much. He hadn’t really realized that it was a pervasive occurrence until he had crawled up onto the couch one day next to him and put his head on Clint’s chest, then fell asleep straight away. Until then he had chalked it up mostly to coincidence and having a new person around.

The blonde didn’t really understand his obsession, either. He hardly even knew the boy, after all, but if he wanted to put his head on Clint’s chest, there was little he could do about it, he supposed. He wasn’t averse to playing with Loki’s hair while he slept, nor did he mind that he was sleeping on him in the first place. But he didn’t quite _like_ Loki, so it was a little awkward whenever someone came in and saw them semi-cuddling. In fact, it sort of pissed him off how little he had seen Loki do to help any of them. If he was the one in danger, Clint thought, shouldn’t he at least be putting forth an effort to aid them?

Natasha was the first to bring the behavior up. “I thought you didn’t like him.”

“I don’t.” Clint shrugged. “But I guess it’s sort of like he’s a pet. He’s fun to cuddle with, but in the end he’s really only any good for morale. He has no fighting or self-defense skills and makes no effort to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit him. He sleeps in sunbeams and glares at people. He’s definitely the most disposable.”

With this, Loki sat up on the couch abruptly and scowled at Clint, standing up and folding his arms. “I am not disposable!”

“You are completely disposable. You are an active hinderance to our efforts.” Clint looked back at him with a demeaning glance, then turned his attention back to Natasha as Loki walked away in a huff. “See? He even stalks off indignantly. There is nothing you can do to please him because your very existence offends him. He is exactly like a cat.”

Clint didn’t see Loki for weeks afterword, and after the first week the jokes about it got stale. Even when he’d looked in the teen’s room he had found nothing, and when they were all to huddle together in the bunker at night, Loki never once showed, which worried Coulson and Thor to no end. Around the middle of Week Three, he finally found him being confronted by the pair in the middle of the living room, his gaze fixed on the floor and his hair framing his face in curtains. When he noticed Clint’s presence, he backed even further into the chair, as if he could disappear into it.

“Loki, we were all worried about you,” Thor said, his voice stern. “And more of you has turned because of your decision. Why did you think it would be a good idea to avoid staying safe with us downstairs when you know the dangers of what will happen if you turn all the way?”

“I wanted to be useful,” he replied, his voice feeble. “I was fighting to learn how to defend myself.”

“You only needed to ask,” Coulson cut in. “I could have taught you.”

“But I need to be more self-reliant,” Loki responded. “I’m completely useless right now and you have other things to do. I wanted to learn how to do something on my own, to prove to myself that I could.”

“The fact of the matter was that you couldn’t, brother. There is no shame in asking for help.”

Clint could tell there was for Loki, though. His pride was every bit as wounded as his body. “What I want to know,” he piped up from behind the couch, “is why this is such a big deal. Why can’t he just go to the school of hard knocks and learn? That’s how Nat and I figured out how to survive.”

Coulson turned around to face the younger man. “He’s a Jotun, and an integral part of the apocalypse that’s happening right now. When he gets hit, part of him turns blue. If enough of him changes, he’ll turn into an ice monster—one that was supposed to lead their armies into battle. If we don’t protect him from the threats that are coming, we’re all going to die and the world will be lost.”

“Wait, what?” Clint paused for a moment. “So what you’re saying is if this kid hadn’t been such a badass and managed to survive the attacks he brought on himself, we’d all be mincemeat right now.”

“That’s not what I meant—“ Despite Coulson’s stern tone, Loki smiled a little from under his hair, and Clint used it to pick up speed.

“Who decided to saddle us with the apocalypse button anyway? The powers that be must really hate us or something. But we’re more than capable of defending him, and he’s obviously capable of defending himself if the situation absolutely requires it.” He turned to Loki. “If you want, I’m willing to teach you some stuff about ranged fighting. If you never have to get close, you’ll never be in danger of being touched or hurt. And I’m not going to tell you exactly how to do it. Whatever you want to specialize in, I can teach you how to excel with it at a distance, and then I’m betting Nat could show you how to use it in close-range if you ever need to.”

Loki bit his lip. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good. You do that.” Clint nodded at the other two before exiting the room. No, he didn’t like Loki. But he didn’t have to like him to recognize that the kid needed to be able to defend himself, for everyone’s sake. And who knew. Maybe that’d make him a little easier to put up with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally found this chapter. Wrote it probably 8 months ago. Finding it has given me some sort of drive to continue it, so there should be more frequent updates in the future. I hope. Thanks for your patience.


End file.
